Imagine Yourself

One face of the DOJ building back in DC is engraved with the words EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW. Every time I passed it I would shake my head. No! Justice is a shining, everlasting ideal. Laws are mutable, temporary, and frequently wrong. Law belongs under justice, not the other way around.

Slavery was legal until 1863. The kidnapping, brutal incarceration, and even murder of migrants across our country is now presumably legal, though clearly in no way just. So, for the past year, starting last May, citizens have been exercising our legal right to observe some of the hearings that determine the fate of scared, hopeful migrants in courthouses nationwide. The American Bar Association (ABA), which receives and tabulates our reports, recorded 10,715 observations through April, documenting 72 courts and 357 judges. Since I have not submitted their detailed, time-consuming report for every hearing I’ve observed – and I know others who have not – that’s an undercount.

Here in El Paso, the accompaniment team, which included my FMS compañera Kim Wagner for about six months last year, does the most important work. As well-founded fear keeps more and more respondents away and quite a few show up virtually, observers see what the accompaniers miss inside judges’ chambers. The ABA can track trends to guide their work, and history and the rest of the world can know what’s happening. I am also convinced that being observed inspires the judges to proceed more courteously and fairly.

On a typical Tuesday, I sit in on one or two dockets, each of which will run for two to four hours. These have typically included between 15 and 30 cases, but this morning, May 26, I saw the first of the new “rocket dockets,” scheduling more than 100 people at once for super-fast group processing. Standing appointments are being canceled and new, earlier dates mailed out, but many people never see the new notice. Those who don’t show up, either virtually or in person, are ruled “removable in absentia,” liable to be picked up at their home, worksite, or a random traffic stop if they don’t go into hiding – perhaps even if they do. 

Thousands of immigrants have received Notices to Appear at court (NTAs) since January 2025. Each is a unique and precious child of God, and each individual hearing dramatically affects many lives beyond their own. I invite you to imagine yourself in a few of the situations I have either observed in court or heard about from prisoners at one of the city’s two camps.

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You have been in the U.S.  for 18 years, working hard and raising a family. The Immigration and Naturalization Service closed your case back in 2013, so you thought everything was fine. Earlier this year you received a Notice to Appear (NTA). It looked important! On the appointed date you woke up in the dark and drove 310 miles from Midland, TX, to El Paso with your wife and three children. Because you have a clean record, lawyers are expensive, and your kids have plans for college, you appear pro se – without representation. The judge looks at your documents, advises you to find a lawyer, and schedules another hearing in six months to give you time to do that. When you leave the courtroom, five masked ICE agents arrest you and take you away, leaving your crying wife and children behind.  

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You entered the U.S. in 2018, applied for a work permit, and got a job.  Before long you fell for a guy who worked in the same hospital, a U.S. citizen. You kept him at arm’s length for a while so he wouldn’t think you were only interested in his citizenship, but when he proposed the next year, you said yes. Now, you are the parents of two little boys. Last year, when you got an NTA, you borrowed and scraped together enough to hire a lawyer. He said he was filing an I-130 with its five attachments and also adjusting your status; that both would cost money and take time, but you’d be ok. When you call to be sure he has the court date, thousands of dollars later, the phone number he gave you has been disconnected. You are able to attend the hearing by WebEx, since you live in Florida, but that lawyer isn’t online. The judge is kind and gives you six months to find another lawyer. But where will you find the money to hire one? 

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You brought your medical degree to the U.S. 15 years ago because as a woman, you were not allowed to practice in Afghanistan. You have been happy in your work and you have a great partner, but you have spent almost $16,000 on lawyers and thought you had done everything right until you received an NTA earlier this year. The judge tells you about the option of pre-conclusion voluntary departure, which would give you several months to return home at your own expense and possibly return to the U.S. in a few years. You are tired. Your heart wants to stay and your head wants to leave. The judge is patient while you wrestle with yourself, and you finally decide to stay, to keep pursuing your appeals. Then you leave the courtroom and the ICE agents take you to the Processing Center. You have been held for six months so far, at two different camps. When will it end? Some people you’ve met have been in detention for over two years. 

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You and your housemates were awakened one March morning by masked men knocking on your door. They broke the door, pulled you outside, put you in handcuffs, took away your wallet and phone, and pulled you into an unmarked car while your neighbors watched and your friends tried to defend you. After you spent nine weeks at the Processing Center, the guards said you had been scheduled for a hearing, but that date came and went. When you asked the guards, they shrugged and told you to shut up. You don’t want to make them angry because you know three people died at this camp in six weeks last winter. People you know saw the guards strangling one of them.

Today you finally went before a judge inside the camp. He said you have been ruled Removable in Absentia because you failed to show up at a February hearing. What hearing? He says an NTA was sent to your address – but you had moved twice since you left that address. Now you are waiting to learn when you’ll be deported. The food is terrible, and you’re told it’s worse at the camp where you will be taken soon. You have learned some rough Spanish from the other prisoners, but no one in your pod of 50 women speaks your language, and no one has visited you. 

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And then, rarely – but often enough to keep hope alive – there’s a happy outcome.

When you, your wife and daughter, and your month-old son went to a regular immigration check-in last October, the others were told to come back for you in an hour. When they came back, they learned you had been taken away. In January, after months without a word, they heard you were in El Paso. Friends helped them set up phone contact and engage a lawyer. A hearing was scheduled, postponed, and rescheduled, then your appeal was denied. In May, you were moved to a prison in New Mexico. On May 27 – your 39th birthday – you suddenly learned you were being released that day, following (you later learned) a court order that affected a large group of detainees. ICE transported you to Annunciation House in El Paso, travel arrangements were made, and you were back in Maryland the next day.

Thanks be to God, Alleluia!

Question for Reflection: Which of these stories resonated with you or surprised you the most?

Mary takes a picture outside the courthouse with the Wednesday prayer group. Camp visitors, ABA observers, ICE watchers, and other helpers pray and share updates.